Kenneth Patchen has been called the Yankee Doodle Blake of dissident U.S. poetry from the Depression era, the War Years, on into the Beat Generation. Born into the steel-mill blasts of Youngstown Ohio at the height of the industrial age, Patchen is a true American grassroots poet-prophet of the working-class avant-garde. Is such a thing possible?
Well, in over twenty books of poetry, novelistic experimentation, picture-poems and poem-scapes, he proved that it is. He also proved that an unfettered belief in the beauty of the human spirit could be part of a high aesthetic calling. Yet, oddly enough, his work is hardly known to anyone under the age of 30. Why?
That’s one question Celery Flute: The Kenneth Patchen Newsletter hopes to answer. A magazine of serious literary scholarship, it will also offer reviews of new works, historical discussion of mainstream and outsider artists and writers from the 1930s to the 1960s, as well as images of very rare painted books and covers.
Above: A sample picture-poem Kenneth Patchen made in 1955.
Please stop by the fundraising event at Rust Belt Books (202 Allen St, in Buffalo) on Thursday, June 29 at 7:00 p.m. to hear some of his poems read to Jazz, and hear tributes and poems by local legends Bill Sylvester and Michael Basinksi, readings by local poets, as well as a benefit art auction of works by artists like Isabelle Pelissier and Jeff Vincent (below), and a flute solo by Jeanine Giffear! Postage Stamps can be donated to help defray the cost of mailing the issue, and all donations will also get you a free copy of the limited-run issue #1! – Douglas Manson